THE Battle of Cable Street resonates as a vital moment in radical history, with the stories of those who fought there living on for future generations. The 1936 clash, between working-class people of London’s East End and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, has attracted much attention from musicians and actors.

From the mid-1980s, when folk-punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang gave us the anthemic The Ghosts of Cable Street, through to folkies The Young ‘Uns creating a new song, Cable Street, as part of their show about the anti-fascist Johnny Longstaff. A few years ago, the inimitable Stephen Berkoff staged his verse play, They Shall Not Pass, and this year sees the continued run of The Merchant of Venice 1936, transposed to the East End, and Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock, as fascists threaten the community.